Five top US industry chiefs share a mind-boggling £1.1bn jackpot

America may be in the grip of its gravest economic crisis since the 1930s, but there's precious little sign that the captains of US industry have adapted to this new age of austerity.

The five highest-earning executives took home a staggering £1.1bn between them last year, including a £425million payout for private equity baron Stephen Schwarzman, research revealed.

Coming at a time when one in ten Americans is out of work, the huge rewards are likely to enrage lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Great success: Oracle owner Larry Ellison is worth an estimated £13bn and took home over £300m last year, but the Schwarzman's beat him with £425m

The windfall for Schwarzman, the founder of buy-out giant
Blackstone, could prove especially controversial given President Barack
Obama's vow to crack down on Wall Street's profligate bonus culture.

Blackstone has not been bailed out by the US government so
Schwarzman's remuneration does not come under the watchful eye of
Obama's bank pay tsar Kenneth Feinburg.

But the firm was deeply enmeshed with the credit buildup of the
mid-2000s, the implosion of which led to the first recession since the
Second World War.

Schwarzman earns a base salary of £1.4million, with the remainder of
his pay packet comprising shares granted to him after Blackstone's 2007
stock market flotation.

A contemporary of George W Bush at Yale, Schwarzman knew the former
president through their membership of the secretive Skull and Bones
society.

America's second-highest corporate earner last year was technology
tycoon Larry Ellison, worth an estimated £13billion. The founder of
software giant Oracle, who rose from impoverished beginnings in New
York's Bronx district, took home more than £300million last year.

Seven of the top ten highest earners in corporate America last year
were energy bosses. As crude surged to a record of $147 a barrel last
summer, oil executives such as Ray Irani of Occidental Petroleum and
John Hess of Hess Corp enjoyed vast windfalls.

>> One of Britain's
best-paid bosses, Barclays £40million-a-year tax avoidance expert
Roger Jenkins, has quit the bank to set up his own venture.

His advisory business will help companies raise cash in the Middle
East and from sovereign wealth investors, who stumped up £7billion in
emergency funding for Barclays last autumn.